Chinese military accuses U.S. of starting a global 'Internet war' on Arab governments

The Associated PressA Chinese flag waves in front of the Google China headquarters in Beijing.

BEIJING — The
Chinese military accused the U.S. on Friday of launching a global
"Internet war" to bring down Arab and other governments, redirecting the
spotlight away from allegations of major online attacks on Western
targets originating in China.

The accusations Friday by Chinese
military academy scholars, and their urging of tougher policing of the
Internet, followed allegations this week that computer hackers in China
had compromised the personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people,
including government officials, military personnel and political
activists.

Google traced the origin of the attacks to the city of
Jinan that is home to a military vocational school whose computers were
linked to a more sophisticated assault on Google's systems 17 months
ago. China has denied responsibility for the two attacks.

Writing
in the Communist Party-controlled China Youth Daily newspaper, the
scholars did not mention Google's claims, but said recent computer
attacks and incidents employing the Internet to promote regime change in
Arab nations appeared to have originated with the U.S. government.

"Of
late, an Internet tornado has swept across the world ... massively
impacting and shocking the globe. Behind all this lies the shadow of
America," said the article, signed by Ye Zheng and Zhao Baoxian,
identified as scholars with the Academy of Military Sciences.

"Faced
with this warmup for an Internet war, every nation and military can't
be passive but is making preparations to fight the Internet war," it
said.

While nuclear war was a strategy of the industrial era,
Internet war is a product of the information age, the article said. Such
conflicts stand to be hugely destructive, threatening national security
and the very existence of the state, it said.

China needs to
"express to the world its principled stance of maintaining an 'Internet
border' and protecting its 'Internet sovereignty,' unite all advanced
forces to dive into the raging torrent of the age of peaceful use of the
Internet, and return to the Internet world a healthy, orderly
environment," the article said.

China already heavily filters
content and blocks numerous foreign websites, a system known as the
"Great Firewall of China." The police employ a large force of Internet
monitors to scour the Web for content deemed illegal or subversive, and
those users transmitting sensitive contact can be charged with sedition
or other crimes.

A number of foreign governments say they've been
targeted by hacking attacks from China, although Beijing routinely
denies undertaking such operations and says it too is a victim of such
activity.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters
attacks such as the one alleged by Google were a primary reason why the
State Department had for the first time created a cyber-security
coordinator.

The FBI said it was investigating Google's
allegations, but no official government email accounts have been
compromised. Google said all the hacking victims have been notified and
their accounts have been secured.